4to. pp. (16), 264, (8). Contemporary vellum. Extremely rare sole edition of this new biography by the Spanish Jesuit Alonso de Andrade. The place of publication is significant: this period perhaps marks the height of Spanish female mysticism, of which St. Gertrude and her ‘Revelations’ were an obvious fore-runner. According to Stephen Haliczer (Between Exaltation and Infamy: Female Mystics in the Golden Age of Spain), Teresa of Avila was in fact deliberately painted as “a kind of Spanish reincarnation of Gertrude the Great” in order to deflect criticism of her controversial status. The Spanish public’s appetite for details of Teresa’s medieval antecedent was thus satisfied at last by Andrade’s timely biography. “In this work, Andrade underscores Gertrude’s growing importance by referring to the enormous extension of her cult in the Hispanic world…. Stretching the historical truth more than a little, Andrade makes Teresa take Gertrude as her spiritual guide…” (Haliczer).

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